


Hello, here is Egypt - we want our river back

by TimeTravelFreak



Series: One Day Is Not Enough [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, a little teenage angst and denial thrown in, because that is the prompt, but eren had to get it from somewhere, but they talk about him, carla is an awesome mom, carla's pov, coming to terms with feelings, good that carla is so bamf, grisha is as romantically challenged as his son, in the fic it's carla, jean doesn't show up, teenage eren, which i like better, why is carla's tag written as kalura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 23:19:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1406320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TimeTravelFreak/pseuds/TimeTravelFreak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erejean week</p><p>Day 3: Denial</p><p>This is part of the story Jean was missing when Carla invited him to the Jeager Party.</p><p>When her son is acting strange (he is talking about <i>dating</i> - he must be sick), she decides to have a talk with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hello, here is Egypt - we want our river back

**Author's Note:**

> In my head-canon Carla is awesome. I don't know if I managed to portray her awesomeness appropriately, but I tried.
> 
> She might also, just maybe, be a troll. And she has supernatural mother senses. So watch out for that.

Eren didn't usually think too deeply about things.

That wasn't to say that he wasn't intelligent – he was, or that he didn't care about people or things – he did.

But he liked acting more than thinking, which gave him a reputation for being reckless. Something which, he could at least admit to himself, wasn't entirely unfounded.

Jean liked to tell him that he didn't think about things enough.

Eren usually replied that Jean thought about things too much.

Jean would reply to _that_ , that too much was better than not at all.

Eren usually replied with a fist to the face.

Or at least he had before he had become aware of his feelings for the other boy and even now the chance of a kiss or a punch were fifty-fifty. (Though admittedly, the first one was gaining in popularity.)

Getting Eren to actually admit that he was in love had been an accomplishment in itself, as Carla Jeager could attest to.

She had been the first to notice that something was going on with her boy. Grisha loved his son, but while his abilities in his field of medicine were unparalleled and he was sharp as a tack when it came to problems of logistic and psychological nature, he had a blind spot a mile wide when it came to Eren.

Especially since the boy had tried to keep a large part of his dating history from them.

With varying success.

Carla still fondly remembered the conversation the three of them had about safe sex and procreation – as Grisha had called it.

Both of her boys had been mortified, their faces bright red and while she supposed she could have let at least Grisha escape, she had always been an equal opportunity woman and if she had to sit through the infamous 'Talk', then so did he.

Especially since he was the doctor in the family.

Now that she thought about, it was possible that that talk had been the reason for Eren's reticence where his girlfriends and/or boyfriends were concerned.

She wasn't quite sure whether he was straight, gay or anything in between or around, but then that didn't really matter as long as he was happy.

Years ago she had hoped that he and Mikasa would develop feelings for each other – if only so she could be sure of some grandchildren – but while Mikasa had been open to the idea, Eren hadn't even considered it.

Eren had never seemed to consider romance, meeting with people when he liked them and leaving them (though they left him a lot too) when he lost interest.

He wasn't being cruel – at least she hoped so – but he rarely thought ahead or considered another person's point of view, which made it difficult for anyone to develop a deeper relationship with him.

Additionally, where Grisha had a blind spot a mile wide where it concerned Eren and romance, Eren had the same spot also concerning romance.

Frowning thoughtfully she considered that thought. Maybe it was something genetic – Jeager men were incapable of perceiving romantic thoughts. Though Grisha didn't seem to have that problem when they were dating.

Another thing she had noticed was that while they were oblivious when they themselves were involved, they were even more oblivious where it concerned other people.

So she had been more than surprised when Eren had started to talk about 'a friend of his' who was so hopeless at dating people that even her son took note of it.

In the beginning she had thought that was just it. Just a footnote that there was someone even more romantically challenged than her son.

It had been an unexpectedly uplifting thought.

She had thought that that was all it was, until Eren had mentioned it again a few days later.

“So this guy I mentioned? Jean? He is going on a date. Again.” He had been scowling down at his breakfast as if it had offended him, even though she had made his favourite blueberry pancakes.

“Oh? Well hopefully it will go well for him,” she had said, not yet knowing that she was stepping on a landmine.

Eren's scowl deepened.

“There is no way it'll go well,” he told her and, oddly enough that thought seemed to both cheer him up and depress him at the same time.

“He always tries too hard and pretends he's some kind of uber-boyfriend material. Only he can't keep up the farce and the people he goes out with leave him.”

That though brought a smirk to his face and Carla frowned, about to reprimand him for it when he continued, this time deflating, his smirk turning into an unhappy frown.

“And then he is all depressed and he gets this look on his face where he looks like someone killed his puppy or stomped on his favourite pair of glasses or tore his heart out and-” He stopped for a moment, shoving away his plate and letting his head drop onto the tabletop. “-and he's no fun anymore. He'll only talk to Marco, he won't join when we invite him out and even when I bait him he won't even react. It's annoying.”

While he had been talking, Carla's eyes had widened incredulously.

Eren took care of his friends and hated to see them unhappy, but she had never seen him be that astute at judging another person's emotional state.

Also she had never heard him be that forlorn about a friend not paying attention to him.

Of course she had known about Jean, even though she had never met him. When the two boys had met he had been the only thing Eren had talked about for a while.

About how he was a stupid horseface and about how he always got strange when Eren was walking with Mikasa, about how he couldn't win a fight to save his life even though he always picked them and about how they hated each other.

He had said all of that with a grin, proudly showing off his blackened eyes and the scratches down his arms.

At first she had thought that someone was picking on her boy until Armin had told her in secret that, while Jean started a fair amount of their fights, Eren did nothing to disencourage him and even started them when he was in a bad mood.

“And sometimes even when he is in a good mood,” Armin had told her, looking as confused about it as she felt. 

“I still haven't completely figured out what that is about, but I'm gathering information right now.”

The serious look on his face had made her smile and after ruffling his hair and giving him a biscuit, she had sent him off to play again, thinking to herself that her son could be a little odd.

She didn't approve of fighting, but then she wasn't a boy and if it made Eren happy...

So she had stocked up on plasters and bandages and dealt with things as they came.

As Eren had grown older, he had stopped talking about Jean so much, but he hadn't stopped completely. They had a lot of the same friends so even if they disliked each other, they always seemed to end up spending time together.

And every time Eren talked about him there was this odd gleam in his eyes, his face full of emotion.

One time he had even cried after Jean had refused to talk to him for a month because Eren had accidentally destroyed a love letter the other boy had been writing.

Now seeing him like this, she wondered whether that really had been an accident. She also wondered how she hadn't seen it before.

Or maybe she was just so desperate for Eren to develop some kind of interest in romance that she was imagining things.

So she had decided to wait and see.

And see she did.

She and Eren had always been close and had only grown closer through her illness. So she was the first person he told when something was bothering him.

Jean seemed to bother him a lot.

The day after the date Eren came home looking downtrodden. He muttered a greeting, dumped his backpack on the floor and trudged up to his room.

She didn't hear the door close, so she waited a few minutes before following him up, softly knocking against the door frame before entering his room completely.

Eren was lying on his bed, his face buried in his pillow, not moving a muscle.

She sat down on the bedside and gently started to rub his back, as though he were still small and not almost done with high school.

“It didn't go well?” She guessed, her voice as gentle as her touch, not having to ask what this was about.

Eren made a frustrated noise into his pillow before turning his head slightly to be able to speak.

“It did,” he growled, though he sounded more upset than angry. “She's his girlfriend now and since she is too stuck up to talk to Jean's friends he said he wasn't going to Sasha's party this weekend.”

With a half angry and half broken noise he punched the mattress beside his pillow.

“Sasha was really looking forward to everyone coming too! So how could he just-” With another frustrated noise he grabbed his pillow and pulled it over his head.

Carla bit her lip.

She hated to see him this upset, but she could also tell that it wasn't Sasha's party he was upset about.

She knew the girl rather well and knew that while Sasha liked having her friends around and was absolutely rabid about birthday celebrations and holidays – something Carla approved of – she was also very laid-back when it came to normal parties.

Usually she didn't invite anyone specific and just climbed onto one of the tables in the school cafeteria at lunch time and shouted that she was throwing one. Even Eren didn't go to every single one, sometimes just not in the mood for it.

So that he would begrudge someone else that they weren't going was strange. Again her motherly senses tingled and this time she wasn't ready to just let it lie.

“Are you sure it's just about that?” She asked.

Eren stilled.

“What do you mean?”

His voice was muffled by his pillow, so she couldn't define the tone he said it in, but it sounded unfamiliar.

“I mean that you know well that Sasha doesn't mind who comes and who doesn't. You don't go to every single one of her parties either. She won't care that Jean is passing on it this time. So why do you?”

“I don't!” He shouted, the volume muted but still louder than she had expected.

“Why should I care that he is ditching us for his stupid new girlfriend? He can go drown for all I care!”

She sighed, half tempted to reprimand him for shouting, if only to buy herself time about what to say.

“For someone who doesn't care you sound upset.” She hesitated before ploughing on. “Upset and jealous.”

Eren shot up into a sitting position with such force that Carla leaned back a little in surprise.

He glowered, not at her but at her words, she knew instinctively.

“Why should I be jealous of him just because he has a girlfriend?”

Beneath that glower she could see the confusion he felt at her words and reached out to ruffle his hair. He allowed it with the kind of injured dignity only a teenager could manage, though that quickly melted away in the face of her affection.

There were many things which could be said about her illness, but one thing which was undeniable was, that it made parenting a hot-headed teenager a lot easier.

She knew that she could only think something like this because she was healthy again now.

“Maybe you aren't jealous of him,” she suggested gently. “Maybe you are jealous of her because she is taking him away from you. And your friends,” she added as an afterthought to lessen the blow.

Eren stared.

Then he snorted.

“Yeah, no way. He's just a horse-face. Who needs him anyway.”

Carla raised her eyebrows and looked at her son, wondering whether she should tell him that that had sounded oddly forced to her ears.

Still, she had planted the seeds and Eren seemed to be in a better mood. The rest could wait.

Rome wasn't built in a day after all.

* * *

Apparently Rome had been built faster than she had thought it had.

That night he came rushing down the stairs, a panicked look on his face as he looked at her.

“I am not jealous of her! Really! I'm not! The thought is ridiculous and I don't know how you got it! And he just called me to tell me they broke up anyway. Seems like even he couldn't stand how she was talking trash about us. So it doesn't matter!”

He turned on his heel and walked out of the living room, closing the door behind him louder than he needed to.

Grisha was frowning as he turned towards her.

“Did I miss something?”

Carla just laughed and kissed his cheek.

“Once he has it figured out he'll tell you. Or I will if he chickens out.”

With another confused look he shook his head and turned back to his book.

“If you say so...”

* * *

The morning after that, Eren came to breakfast with dark circles under his eyes and his hair in such disarray that Carla feared she would have to shear it off to get the tangles out.

With a soft smile she placed a plate of blueberry pancakes in front of him. Usually she made sure that they didn't have it more often than once a week, but she had figured that Eren had earned it after the day before.

“How did you know?” He groaned, placing his elbows on either side of his plate and burying his face in his hands.

“I'm your mother,” she told him, “it's my job to know these things.”

He sent her a deeply suspicious look from between his fingers and Carla had to bite back a laugh because of it.

Her son was so cute it was unbelievable.

“But what am I supposed to do now?” He asked and the misery in his voice made her smile disappear.

“Mom, he hates me! Has since I told him to stay away from Mikasa. There is no way he is ever going to like me back.”

His voice wavered.

“Oh, honey...”

With a frown she sat beside him and drew him into a hug. A second later his arms wrapped around her, seeking comfort.

“You have to ask yourself what you want to do now,” she told him softly. “Do you like him enough that you want to put in the time and effort it will take to make him like you? Or do you think it's a crush that will disappear on its own in time?”

Eren's shoulders shook slightly and it was only after hearing the chocked sound he was making that she realised he was laughing.

“It's Jean the horse-face mom. I've known him since forever. I know more about his bad sides than anyone else. There's no way I'd feel like this if I didn't mean it,” he said.

Carla smiled, proud of him for admitting it.

“Then how about you start with becoming his friend?” She asked again. “If you think you like him enough to be really serious about him, you can take your time. If he hates you now his impression can't get get any worse, can it? You can afford to make mistakes, you can learn and slowly work your way up.”

Eren sniffled once, tightening his hug briefly before letting go and drawing back, rubbing his wrist against his eyes.

“That's actually reassuring,” he told her, a shaky smile on his face.

Carla laughed, ruffled his hair – both of them wincing when her fingers got caught in the tangles – and shoved his plate at him again.

“Eat your pancakes boy,” she ordered just to hear him laugh again.

She knew her son. There was nothing he couldn't do once he set his mind on it.

Jean 'horse-face' Kirstein wouldn't know what hit him.


End file.
